Broadcasting Act 1990 in the context of "Party political broadcast"

ITV, legally known as Channel 3, is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network. It is branded as ITV1 in most of the UK except for central and northern Scotland, where it is branded as STV. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition to BBC Television (established in 1936). ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time: BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4.

ITV was, for decades, a network of separate companies that provided regional television services and also shared programmes among themselves to be shown on the entire network. Each franchise was originally owned by a different company. After several mergers, the fifteen regional franchises are now held by two companies: ITV plc, which runs the ITV1 channel, and STV Group, which runs the STV channel.

Independent Local Radio is the collective name given to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom.

As a result of the buyouts and mergers permitted by the Broadcasting Act 1990, deregulation resulting from the Communications Act 2003 and further deregulation from the Media Act 2024, most commercial stations are now neither independent (although they remain independent from the BBC) nor local, as almost all of them are now relays of a national brand, with remaining locality reduced to nothing more than localised commercials, news (which may be from the Ofcom approved area region), weather and peak-time travel information.